Composable resilience policies (retry, timeout, circuit breaker, bulkhead) for native fetch — edge-safe, zero dependencies

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Composable resilience policies for native fetch and any async function. Inspired by Polly and Cockatiel, but built from scratch with modern constraints in mind.

• Zero dependencies — pure TypeScript, nothing to audit
• Edge-safe — runs in Node.js, Bun, Deno, and Cloudflare Workers. No Node.js-specific APIs (setTimeout through standard timers, AbortController for cancellation)
• Composable — stack policies like middleware: wrap(fetch, [timeout, retry, circuitBreaker])
• Type-safe — full TypeScript with generics, works with any () => Promise<T>

Why not opossum or cockatiel?

	fetch-resilience	opossum	cockatiel
Zero deps	Yes	No (6+)	No (2+)
Edge runtime safe	Yes	No (uses Node EventEmitter)	Partial
Composable wrap()	Yes	No (single policy per breaker)	Yes
Bundle size	~2KB	~15KB	~8KB
Native fetch focus	Yes	Generic	Generic

Install

npm install fetch-resilience

Quick Start

import { wrap, retry, timeout, circuitBreaker, bulkhead } from 'fetch-resilience';

const resilientFetch = wrap(fetch, [
  timeout({ ms: 5000 }),
  circuitBreaker({ threshold: 5, halfOpenAfter: 30000 }),
  bulkhead({ maxConcurrent: 10 }),
  retry({ attempts: 3, backoff: 'exponential', delayMs: 200 }),
]);

// Use exactly like fetch
const response = await resilientFetch('https://api.example.com/data');

Policies are applied outer-to-inner. In the example above, the call flows: timeout → circuitBreaker → bulkhead → retry → fetch

If the retry loop takes longer than 5 seconds total, timeout kills the entire operation.

API

retry(options)

Retries failed requests with configurable backoff.

import { retry } from 'fetch-resilience';

const policy = retry({
  attempts: 3,                          // max retries (not counting initial attempt)
  backoff: 'exponential',               // 'fixed' | 'linear' | 'exponential'
  delayMs: 200,                         // base delay in ms (default: 100)
  jitter: true,                         // add random jitter (default: false)
  retryOn: [429, 500, 502, 503, 504],   // HTTP status codes to retry (defaults shown)
  retryOnError: true,                   // retry on network errors (default: true)
});

const result = await policy.execute(() => fetch('https://api.example.com'));

delayMs must be finite, non-negative, and at most 2,147,483,647 ms. Computed backoff is capped at that timer maximum to prevent overflow into an immediate retry.

Backoff strategies:

• fixed — always waits delayMs
• linear — waits delayMs * attempt (100, 200, 300...)
• exponential — waits delayMs * 2^attempt (200, 400, 800...)
• With jitter: true, adds Math.random() * delayMs to each delay

timeout(options)

Aborts the operation after a deadline using AbortController. ms must be finite, non-negative, and at most 2,147,483,647.

import { timeout, TimeoutError } from 'fetch-resilience';

const policy = timeout({ ms: 3000 });

try {
  const result = await policy.execute(() => fetch('https://slow-api.example.com'));
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof TimeoutError) {
    console.log('Request timed out');
  }
}

circuitBreaker(options)

threshold must be a positive safe integer, and halfOpenAfter must be finite and non-negative.

Implements the circuit breaker pattern with three states:

• Closed (normal) — requests flow through. Consecutive failures are counted.
• Open — all requests are immediately rejected with CircuitOpenError. Entered after threshold consecutive failures.
• Half-open — after halfOpenAfter ms, one probe request is allowed through. Success closes the circuit; failure reopens it.

import { circuitBreaker, CircuitOpenError } from 'fetch-resilience';

const policy = circuitBreaker({
  threshold: 5,          // open after 5 consecutive failures
  halfOpenAfter: 30000,  // try again after 30 seconds
  onStateChange: (state) => {
    console.log(`Circuit is now: ${state}`);  // 'closed' | 'open' | 'half-open'
  },
});

try {
  const result = await policy.execute(() => fetch('https://api.example.com'));
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof CircuitOpenError) {
    console.log('Circuit is open — not even trying');
  }
}

bulkhead(options)

Limits concurrent executions. Excess calls are queued (or rejected if the queue is full). maxQueue must be a non-negative integer or Infinity (the default).

import { bulkhead, BulkheadRejectedError } from 'fetch-resilience';

const policy = bulkhead({
  maxConcurrent: 10,   // max 10 simultaneous executions
  maxQueue: 100,       // max 100 waiting in queue (default: unlimited)
});

try {
  const result = await policy.execute(() => fetch('https://api.example.com'));
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof BulkheadRejectedError) {
    console.log('Too many requests queued');
  }
}

wrap(fn, policies)

Composes multiple policies around a function. Policies are applied outer-to-inner — the first policy in the array is the outermost wrapper.

import { wrap, retry, timeout } from 'fetch-resilience';

// timeout wraps retry wraps fetch
const resilientFetch = wrap(fetch, [
  timeout({ ms: 5000 }),
  retry({ attempts: 3, delayMs: 100 }),
]);

const response = await resilientFetch('https://api.example.com/users', {
  method: 'POST',
  body: JSON.stringify({ name: 'Alice' }),
});

Works with any async function, not just fetch:

async function queryDatabase(sql: string): Promise<Row[]> { /* ... */ }

const resilientQuery = wrap(queryDatabase, [
  timeout({ ms: 2000 }),
  retry({ attempts: 2, delayMs: 500, retryOnError: true }),
]);

const rows = await resilientQuery('SELECT * FROM users');

Using policies directly

Every policy implements the Policy<T> interface with a single execute method:

import { retry } from 'fetch-resilience';
import type { Policy } from 'fetch-resilience';

const policy: Policy<Response> = retry({ attempts: 3 });
const response = await policy.execute(() => fetch('https://example.com'));

Edge Runtime Compatibility

fetch-resilience uses only standard web APIs available across all modern runtimes:

API Used	Node.js	Bun	Deno	Cloudflare Workers
Promise	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
setTimeout	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
AbortController	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Math.random	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Date.now	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

No EventEmitter, no process, no Buffer, no fs — nothing that would break in an edge environment.

License

MIT